The World’s Best (Free) Guide to Goal Setting

It’s a paradox. It’s the big goals that excite us and get us to stop hitting the snooze button. They make us feel alive. They make the boring interesting, and the frustrating exciting.

But it’s the big goals that are the least likely to end up accomplished.

After a short burst of energy, the excitement and interest fizzles. And then, maybe, you get excited once again. And then, just like last time, after a short burst of energy, the excitement fizzles and takes you back to where you started, with little or no progress to show for it.

For much of my life, I’ve set only realistic goals. Goals that could be easily accomplished. After all, what’s the point of dreaming big if the obvious result is failure?

But I’ve gotten greedy. I’d rather get work done AND feel inspired.

I don’t want to have just enough motivation to get by. I want as much as possible. More motivation equals more energy and more life.

Are you greedy too?

Do you want more accomplishment, more energy, more happiness, more life?

Then welcome to the world’s best free guide to goal setting.

Goal setting?

I know, doesn’t sound like much.

I’ve read the advice before. I’m sure you have too. I wasn’t impressed.

I’ve had to set SMART at work. Maybe you’ve had to too. It worked… but only a little.

The idea goes, follow these guidelines in setting up your goal, and you’ll be maximizing your chances for success. This process is often used at work, for example, requiring employees to set SMART goals during their annual review, and then reviewing progress the following year.

But here’s the thing: SMART goals are a simplification. They were designed to be used in an organizational setting, to help bosses prod their employees into action. They’re often used for personal improvement, but only because most people think goal setting starts and ends with SMART.

It doesn’t.

SMART goals came into being in 1981. That’s 32 years ago. I promise you, motivation science has come a long way since then.

That’s why I wrote this guide to goal setting – to help increase your chances for success, for whatever your goals happen to be.

Achievement is fun. More importantly, I consider motivation a terminal value – something desirable in and of itself. Even if nothing else changed, I’d rather be more excited than less.

Motivation === Energy === Life

Effective goal setting is no panacea, but done correctly, can tip the odds.

In the words of Piers Steel, one of the world’s best procrastination scientists:

Goal setting – proper goal setting – is the smartest thing you can do to battle procrastination. Though every other technique discussed so far has its place, goal setting alone may be all you need. Regardless of what other books say, this is what’s proven to maximize your motivation.

And when he says proven, he means proven. The Law of Attraction sounds nice, but I’d take replicable experiment over wishful thinking any day of the week.

So it should come as no surprise that tens of thousands of people have spent thousands of dollars each to have their hands held through the process. Effective goal setting is that valuable.

Tony Robbins to the rescue.

A few weeks ago, I listened to a Tony Robbins video for the first time in my life. Just an hour. I was pleasantly surprised – some of the things he talked about were beyond goofy, like Q-Links, but underneath the excitement was some good advice.

The seminar I saw a video of was essentially a really expensive goal setting workshop. Why were people willing to spend thousands of dollars for something they could have gotten from a book? The energy and encouragement.

Without those things, most goal setting advice is useless, intellectually understood but unimplemented.

Goal setting is extremely effective, but because of its unnaturalness, appears boring and tedious.

Goals should be written down.

I’ve read and heard that advice before. I never listened.

Oh no, it’s okay. I’ll just say it aloud in my head.

No. It’s hard to quantify, but across a number of studies, those who wrote their goal down were significantly (as in 2 to 3x) more likely to reach their upper limits.

The first time I finally got around to actually writing something down, I had to spend an hour getting pumped up by reading an inspiring book.

I’m lazy. That’s human nature. That’s okay, we can work around that problem.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll introduce you to the nine critical components of effective goal setting.

At the end of each post, you’ll see a quick and easy question. Take the time to answer and you’ll increase your chances for success.

Ignore them or answer in your head, and you’ll be only slightly closer to achieving your goal.

But I’m a realist. At the end of each post, I’ve got what will hopefully do for you what that inspiring book did for me and what Tony Robbins does for his customers. Go through it, and once you feel sufficiently excited, answer the question. If the inspiration box doesn’t help, tell me what would, and I’ll do my best to provide it.

Think of one long-term dream, desire or goal which excites you. If nothing comes to mind, keep thinking until something does. What did you pick? Scroll down and type it out!

Becker 1978 – Two groups of people given goals on conserving energy. Those given the easy goal did no different, while those given the hard goal cut household energy expenditure by 14% over the duration of the study.

Latham 1978 – Typists given hard goals increased their performance.

Latham 1982 – 39 truck drivers were assigned goals. Over the following four months, their performance increased, being valued at $2.7 million dollars.

Reber 1990 – Factory workers walked through a goal setting workshop and provided feedback increased safety compliance from around 50% to almost 100%.

Rothman 2005 – Smokers helped in setting quit goals were almost twice as likely to have abstained after a quit attempt. This held true even after 18 months.

Seo 2009 – Students walked through the goal setting process were less likely to procrastinate.

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

-Unknown

The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.

I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

If you’d like a tool for setting your goals, you can use this web application:

Gtdagenda. com

You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote and Google Calendar, and also comes with mobile version, and Android and iPhone apps.

If you don’t like SMART, Amit, perhaps you’ll like SMART & SEXY. After all, I know you like sexy things… a lot.

David Delp has come up with an addendum to the SMART framework which captures a lot of what you talk about in this post. It could be useful for you or other people reading this who also think, “Yeah! I don’t like this whole SMART paradigm!”

I feel like finding a balance between working towards your goal effectively, and being happy with your day to day life is the biggest piece of the puzzle. Once you find that sweet spot, you are pretty much done.. all you have to do is stay the course. (Obviously you will face changes, but

Oh and my goal is being able to make a living from my writing. In the past I might have said “writer” or “novelist”, but the medium doesn’t concern me as much anymore.

My long term goal, dream, and desire is to write songs that motivate and captivate people and bring them to their knees in emotion.

Everyday from Monday to Friday I set aside 30 minutes during my lunch break at work to practise and experiment with lyrical and musical composition techniques and concepts.

I have never written a single lyric nor complete song before starting this ritual during the summer and now I am at a point where I can create short verses and groups of phrase that have amazed a couple of my friends who never knew I was capable of writing them.

By next year, I hope to have complete sets of lyrics and musical structures to compose full songs.